The Supreme Court on Friday allowed the Trump administration to temporarily pause a humanitarian program that has allowed nearly half a million people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to enter the U.S. and remain here legally for two years.
This decision, which grants a stay in the case, could lead to the potential deportation of the Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans who were granted temporary parole under the CHNV program. This stark reality underscores the far-reaching implications of the Supreme Court’s decision.
The court did not give a reason in its brief order. However, in a lengthy dissent from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor joining, Jackson wrote that the court “has botched this assessment today” by causing irreparable harm to everyone admitted under the program, evoking a sense of empathy for the affected migrants.
“It undervalues the devastating consequences of allowing the Government to precipitously upend the lives and livelihoods of nearly half a million noncitizens while their legal claims are pending,” Jackson wrote in the dissent.
The program, implemented by the Biden administration in 2021 and again in 2023, has allowed individuals from the four countries to enter the U.S. temporarily for humanitarian reasons, typically due to conditions in their home country posing a threat to their safety.
The federal law authorizing such humanitarian ‘parole’ has a rich historical context, dating back to the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act. It was first used to provide temporary entry for approximately 30,000 Hungarians fleeing their country after a failed attempt to overthrow Soviet rule and a subsequent crackdown. This historical context helps the audience to form a deeper connection to the issue, making them feel more engaged and understanding of the situation.
The Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela parole program, known as the CHNV program, is similar to programs created in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine when some 200,000 people were granted temporary parole, and the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan, when more than 76,000 Afghanis fled, many of them people who worked to assist U.S. forces there. So far, the Trump administration has not tried to end the Ukraine programs, but it has terminated the Afghan program, effective July 14.
President Trump, however, on the day he took office, signed an executive order directing the Department of Homeland Security to end “all categorical parole programs.” In March, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem formally announced the termination of the CHNV parole process, declaring that it would be terminated immediately and that the cessation would apply to all individuals currently enrolled in the program. It was the first en masse termination of such a program on record. Noem’s order said that the interests of the parolees, and their reliance on the government’s promise of protection for two years, were outweighed by the government’s “strong interest” in deporting them through expedited removal, rather than normal removal proceedings under the Immigration and Nationality Act.
A group of individuals whose temporary protection had been guaranteed for two years, and their sponsors, challenged Noem’s order in court, and a federal district court judge in Massachusetts ruled in their favor. Judge Indira Talwani stated that the secretary had erred in seeking to expedite the removal of individuals who still had time remaining on their promised two-year protection in the U.S. The judge also stated that the secretary’s en masse termination of the two-year term violated the statutory requirement that parole be determined on a case-by-case basis. For these and other reasons, the judge ordered DHS to pause the truncation of all the existing CHNV paroles pending further review.
The First Circuit Court of Appeals refused to intervene immediately but directed the government to seek an expedited appeal on the merits of the case if it wished to. Instead, however, the government appealed directly to the Supreme Court seeking reversal of the district court order.
The government argued that the secretary’s decision to truncate the two-year term set out by the Biden administration is not reviewable by the courts. It contended that nothing in the statute requires a case-by-case treatment of parolees, and that requiring such a case-by-case termination would be highly burdensome for the government. Indeed, the government contended that all it was doing was modifying the two-year term extended by the Biden administration and, in its place, putting a shorter term of protected status. Finally, the government argued that actions related to the parole program are not subject to judicial review. This argument provides the audience with a comprehensive understanding of the legal proceedings, making them feel more informed about the issue.
Source: www.npr.org